Such a telecommunication transmission frame is for instance the so-called Synchronous Transport Module (STM) frame STM-4c used in the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) protocol and standardized according to the CCITT Recommendations G.707, G.708 and G.709. This frame STM-4c includes a control field storing the pointer information and the repeated concatenation information, and a data field storing a single user data block, or at least a first part thereof. The pointer information indicates the start location of the data block, whilst the concatenation information indicates that the data information is constituted by a single block.
Another type of frame is time frame STM-4, also standardized according to the CCITT Recommendations G.707, G.708 and G.709, and wherein the control field stores four distinct pointer informations but no concatenation information. The data field of the frame STM-4 stores four byte-interleaved user data blocks which are thus each four times smaller than the single data block of the frame STM-4c and of which the start locations in the frame are given by respective ones of the four pointer informations.
The control field of the frame STM-4 differs from that of the frame STM-4c in that in the latter the locations of the three last pointer information are filled with three identical concatenation informations.
According to Annex B (pages 53 to 55) of the CCITT Recommendation G.783, a concatenation information as well as a pointer information are processed by a logical machine according to a first and a second state diagram respectively. A logical machine operating according to four identical second state diagrams as a function of the pointer informations is for instance required to process the four pointer informations of the frame STM-4.
Based on the teaching of the pointer processing of a frame STM-4, a logical machine performing the state transitions of one second state diagram and of three first state diagrams should also be able to process the single pointer information and the three concatenation informations of the frame STM-4c respectively.
Such a logical machine is relatively expensive and occupies a relatively large surface area when integrated on an electronic chip.